REF: 66-2303-3356006 - Sports Centre Opening Hours
Your comment: Opening Hours of the Sports Centre. I'm not sure if this is the right place to raise this, but the Sports Centres opening hours are very limiting to students. I've regularly visited the Sports Centre for a year and a half and really appreciate the new equipment. The chances to use it all optimally are limited as peak times get very overcrowded. Additionally, on Saturdays and Sundays, when the gym closes at 4pm already, those of us who have to work have almost no chance of getting a workout in. Having talked to other students about this, I know I'm not the only one with these issues. Lately with the gym being closed on most holidays, students are denied completely what is a major recreational factor for many, important for the overall quality of life, mental health and performance. I want to mention here how amazing and friendly the staff are. Generally Aberystwyth Sports Centre has a beautiful, inclusive atmosphere. The opening times are really the only issue and I was wondering if you thought about extending opening hours for the above mentioned reasons.
Our response:
Thank you for your feedback.
The new gym refurbishment has been incredibly popular and enabled us to increase the numbers per session from 35 to 85 per hour which has resulted in an increase of 6300 additional visits in Feb 2023 compared to Feb 2022. Inevitably there will be peak periods where some of the equipment isn’t immediately available but we have purchased extra units of kit to help mitigate this as much as possible. We also have the Sgubor min-gym which is located at Fferm Penglais and is open 24 hours a day that all residential students can access.
We have been working to extend the offer over the holidays, during the Christmas period 2022, we were open on the 29th/30th of December, we are also looking to extend this further with additional opening days at Easter and during some bank holidays.
It’s great to hear that the staff are appreciated!
With regards to opening hours, for many years we operated between 9 am-9 pm on weekdays and 10-4 pm weekends. Over recent years the request by students and the community has always been to open earlier rather than later so we have extended open hours to 6.30 am on weekdays and 8/9 am on the weekends. Our times are replicated by the leisure centre and other gyms in town due to the lower demand for late afternoon gym sessions, making it financially unviable to open. Further to this, due to the Pandemic, the leisure industry is struggling to provide/employ enough qualified staff to work within the industry generally because leisure centres were completely closed for 18 months and no new staff were trained during this period. This is adding further pressure to the core staff to cover the existing operational hours, it is important for our staff and their well-being that we provide adequate breaks away from work for staff to recover.